Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Hello!”

  “Don’t shout, Mom.”

  “I gotta shout, I’m next to a cement mixer!”

  “You want me to call you back?”

  “What?”

  “You want me to call you back?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Mom said, at a much more reasonable volume. “He turned off. How you doing out on Long Island?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m—”

  “Hold on, I got a fare, a fare!”

  “Okay.”

  Mom must have put the phone on the front seat next to her, amid the newspapers and take-out crap that always accumulated in there. He could hear a male voice, but not what it said, and then he heard his Mom’s distant voice say, “You got it,” and a few seconds later, she was back, very pleased. “JFK,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah? Listen, that’s good, because things worked out different.”

  “Long Island, you mean?”

  “Well, it didn’t happen,” Stan said. “The rest of them all went off to discuss things with the officials, you know?”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “So it turns out,” Stan said, “I’ll be home for dinner after all.”

  “No, you won’t,” Mom said.

  “Why not?”

  “John called, he’s got something. He wants a meet at the O.J., six o’clock.”

  “Okay, then,” Stan said as Max came back in, trailing the memory of cigar smoke. “Where I am instead, I’m at Maximilian’s. When you’re done at Kennedy, come over here, pick me up, and we’ll go up to the O.J. together.”

  “Don’t let that Maximilian cheat you, Stan.”

  “What an idea,” Stan said, and hung up, and said, “Well, Max? Is that attractive?”

  “But what does it attract?” Max wanted to know. “Truthfully, Stanley, how hot is that vehicle?”

  “Well,” Stan said, “if it happened you wanted to fry an egg . . .”

  “That’s what I thought. So that means,” Max explained, “a lotta work in the shop, changing parts, changing numbers on things, getting paperwork that doesn’t turn into dust in your hand. This is all expensive, Stanley, it’s time-consuming, the boys in the shop, it’s gonna take a lot of time away from their regular work, I’m not sure it’s even worth my while to get into it. But I know you, I like you, and I know you’re anxious to get movin outta here—”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” Stan told him. “My Mom’s got a fare to Kennedy, and then she’s coming here to pick me up. So we got all the time in the world to discuss this. Isn’t that nice?”

  “My lucky day,” Max said.

  The phone rang, and Harriet answered: “Maximilian’s Used Cars, Miss Caroline speaking. Oh, I’m sorry, no, Mr. Maximilian is no longer with us, he retired to Minsk. Yes, I’ll pass that along. You, too.” Hanging up, she returned to her machine-gun typing. “The one with the machete,” she said.

  37

  * * *

  When Dortmunder walked into the O.J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at four minutes before six that evening, Rollo, the bulky, balding bartender, was painting MERY XM on the extremely dusty mirror over the back bar, using some kind of white foam from a spray can, possibly shaving cream, while the regulars, clustered at one end of the bar, were discussing the names of Santa’s reindeer. “I know it starts,” the first regular said, “‘Now, Flasher, now, Lancer, now—’”

  “Now, now, wait a second,” the second regular said. “One of those is wrong.”

  Dortmunder walked over to stand at the bar, somewhat to the right of the regulars and directly behind Rollo, whose tongue was stuck slightly out of the left corner of his mouth as, with deep concentration, he painted downward a left-trending diagonal next to M.

  “Oh yeah?” said the first regular. “Which one?”

  “I think Flasher,” said the second regular.

  A third regular joined in at that point, saying, “Naw, Lancer.”

  Rollo started the second leg of the next letter.

  “So what are you telling me?” demanded the first regular. “They’re both wrong?”

  A fourth regular, who had been communing with the spheres of the universe, or maybe with the bottles on the back bar, inhaled, apparently for the first time in several days, and said, “Rupert.”

  All the regulars looked at him. Rollo started the horizontal.

  “Rupert what?” demanded the second regular.

  “Rupert Reindeer,” the fourth regular told him.

  The third regular, in total disdain, said, “Wait a minute. You mean the one with the red nose?”

  “Yeah!”

  “That’s not a reindeer!” the third regular informed him.

  “Oh yeah?” Transition complete, the fourth regular was at this point fully in the here and now. “Then why do they call him Rupert Reindeer?”

  “He’s not one of these reindeer,” the first regular explained.

  “He’s not even Rupert,” the third regular said. “He’s Rodney. Rodney, the red-nosed—”

  “They won’t let him play,” the second regular said, “unless it’s foggy.”

  “And you,” the third regular said, pointing a definitive finger at the fourth regular, “are foggy.”

  “Hey!” the fourth regular said. “How’m I supposed to take that?”

  Rollo added an extremely accomplished apostrophe just to the right of XMA, then paused to contemplate that next bare space.

  “Any way you want,” the third regular said.

  The fourth regular frowned, thinking that over.

  Rollo shook his head, then turned slightly to glance toward Dortmunder. “How you doin,” he said.

  “Fine,” Dortmunder assured him.

  Rollo shook the spray can in the direction of the space next to XMA’. “It’s all curves from now on,” he said.

  “You did good with the R,” Dortmunder told him.

  Rollo was cheered by that. “You think so? It’s in the wrist, I believe.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dortmunder said.

  “I think one of them is Dopey,” the second regular said.

  “Yeah,” the third regular said, “and I know which one, too.”

  The first regular said, “I think the next two are Masher and Nixon.”

  “Nixon!” snorted the third regular. “He wasn’t even alive yet.”

  “Well, it’s Masher and somebody.”

  “Donner,” said the second regular. “I know Donner goes in there somewhere.”

  “No, no, no,” said the first regular. “Donner’s that place where they ate the people.”

  Everybody was interested in that. “Who ate the people?” asked the fourth regular, who had decided not to make a federal case out of being called foggy, or whatever it was.

  “Some other people,” the first regular explained. “They got stuck in the snow, on a bus.”

  “Now wait a minute,” the third regular said. “It wasn’t a bus. I know what you’re talkin about, it was a long time ago, it was one of those wagons, Saratoga wagons.”

  “It wasn’t Saratoga,” the second regular said. “Maybe you mean station wagon.”

  As Rollo started the slow circuitous path of the final letter on the mirror, the first regular said, “Station wagon! If it’s too long ago for a bus, whada they doin in a station wagon?”

  “I dunno, Mac,” the second regular said, “it’s your story.”

  Rollo finished a somewhat recognizable S, and the first regular called over, “Hey, Rollo, you got that misspelled there!”

  Rollo looked at the regular, then at his handiwork. MERY XMA’S. He didn’t seem particularly worried. “Oh yeah?” he said.

  “You gotta spell merry,” the first regular told him, “with an a.”

  The third regular said, “What are you, nuts? When you spell it with an a, that’s what you call it when you get married.”

  “Only if that’s her name,” the fourth regular said, and received massive frowns of bewilderment
in response.

  Rollo at last put down the spray can and faced Dortmunder. “It’s the thought that counts,” he said.

  “You’re right about that.”

  “You’ll be wanting the back room.”

  “Sure. We’re gonna be the other bourbon, the vodka and red wine, the beer and salt, and the beer and salt’s Mom. I think she’s a beer, too.”

  “She is,” Rollo agreed. A professional to his fingertips, he identified his customers exclusively by their choice of beverage. “I’ll give you the other bourbon’s glass,” he said, “and send everybody back when they get here. You’re the first.”

  “I’m kind of the host,” Dortmunder said.

  As Rollo went off to get glasses and ice and a bottle of Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—Our Own Brand, as it said on the label, the regulars spent some time trying to decide if it was Mary that was a grand old name or Ulysses S. Grant that was a grand old name. Ulysses S. Grant certainly sounded grander. Probably older, too.

  Rollo brought over a round enameled metal Rheingold Beer tray containing two plain water glasses, a shallow ironstone bowl with ice cubes in it, and the alleged bourbon, which, beyond the brave statement of its label, was a muddy brown liquid that looked as if it might have been scooped from a river somewhere in Azerbaijan. “See me on the way out,” he advised.

  “Sure,” Dortmunder said. “Merry exmas,” he added, and carried the tray past the regulars, most of whom were pretty sure at this point that Nerdy was not one of the original Seven Dwarfs. Dortmunder went on down beyond the end of the bar and down the hall past doors decorated with black metal dog silhouettes labeled POINTERS and SETTERS and past the phone booth, where a new string now dangled from the quarter slot, and on through the green door at the very back, into a small square room with a concrete floor. All the walls were completely covered from floor to ceiling by beer and liquor cases, leaving a minimal space in the middle for a battered old round table with a stained felt top that had once been pool-table green but now looked as though some Amsterdam Liquor Store bourbon had been poured all over it a long time ago and let dry. This table was surrounded by half a dozen armless wooden chairs.

  This room had been dark when Dortmunder opened the door, but when he hit the switch beside the door, it all sprang to life, illuminated by one bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire. Dortmunder walked all around the table to sit in the chair that faced the door; the first arrival always did that. Setting the tray on the table, near his right hand, he shrugged out of his coat and let it drape behind him on the chair. Then he put two ice cubes into one of the glasses, poured muddy liquid on top, took a sip, and leaned back to gaze around the room in contentment. Small, cramped, windowless; what a nice place to be.

  Tiny Bulcher appeared in the doorway. Barely visible in his left fist was a tall glass containing what looked like, but was not, cherry soda. He paused to cock his head and say, “Dortmunder. What’s that on your face?”

  With his free hand, Dortmunder brushed at his face. “What, I got a smutch?”

  “No,” Tiny said, coming in, moving around the table to put his glass at the place to Dortmunder’s left, “it almost looked like a smile.” He was wearing his World War I infantry coat again, which he dropped on the floor behind him, then sat down. “So what’s,” he said, picking up his glass, “with the giggling all at once? It ain’t like you.”

  “Well, it coulda been I was thinking,” Dortmunder said, “that at last I know what I’m doing. Or maybe it’s just I’m somewhere at last that at least I should know what I’m doing because at least it’s the right place. Or maybe it’s just that Fitzroy and Irwin aren’t gonna be here.”

  “So who is,” Tiny asked, “besides us?”

  “Kelp, and Stan Murch, and I think Murch’s Mom.”

  Tiny looked around at the table and the chairs. “You’re early,” he said, “which is right, and I’m on time.”

  “So am I,” Kelp said, coming in, waving a thick manila envelope. “I brought the stuff,” he said. “Copies for all of us.” He took the chair to Dortmunder’s right, putting the envelope down there, shucking his coat, seating himself, reaching for the other glass on the tray.

  “Which makes Murch late,” Tiny said. Tiny was known to disapprove of people who weren’t punctual.

  “I wouldn’t be,” said a voice in the hall, approaching, “if we’d come the way I wanted to come.” Stan Murch appeared, walking briskly. “But no,” he said. “Whada they say? A boy should listen to his mother? Wrong again!”

  “I couldn’t know there was gonna be an accident up ahead of us,” Murch’s Mom said, coming in behind her son. Both carried glasses of beer, and Murch also carried a salt shaker. Being a driver, he limited his alcohol intake to the point where his beer tended to go flat before he was finished with it, so from time to time he’d shake a little salt into it to bring the head right back up again.

  “The accident wasn’t the point,” Murch said as he put his glass and shaker down beside Kelp. “Atlantic Avenue is the point,” he said.

  “Hello, all,” Murch’s Mom said, electing to come over and sit beside Tiny instead of next to her son.

  “Hello,” all said.

  “Every known religion,” Murch went on, shucking out of his coat, “has some big-deal event or celebration or thing in December, and every known ethnic, too, and for every known religion and every known ethnic, there’s three other blocks of stores on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn that has everything especially for them, and in December on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, every known religion and every known ethnic is shopping, and not one in a million of those people, that came here from thousands of places that you don’t even know about, ever learned how to drive.”

  Tiny said gently to Murch’s Mom, “Would you wanna close the door there, okay?”

  “Sure,” Murch’s Mom said. “It was the accident,” she confided, and went over to shut the door.

  Taking his seat, Murch said, “To drive on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in December is to make a serious statement that you don’t really wanna go anywhere.”

  Tiny patted the air in Murch’s direction with one big palm. “Okay, Stan, thank you,” he said. “You weren’t that late.”

  “Fine,” Murch said. “I was an obedient son, that’s what you get.”

  They were all seated now as though the door were the television set they were going to watch. The chairs facing away from the door got very little use, all in all.

  Dortmunder said, “Okay, what we got here, we got an ongoing situation that Murch and Murch’s Mom should be brought up-to-date on, so what it comes down to, for the benefit of the recent arrivals, we got a place to go into that’s loaded with stuff, out in the boonies, and while we’re there, we gotta get some hair from a hairbrush. Or a comb.”

  Murch and his Mom continued to look at Dortmunder, who considered himself finished. Murch said, “That’s it? We’re up-to-date now?”

  “I don’t feel,” Murch’s Mom said, “like I’m fully aboard here, somehow. How about you, Stanley?”

  Murch, who’d forgotten about the horrors of Atlantic Avenue, shook his head and said, “No, Mom, I gotta admit. Aboard? No.”

  Dortmunder sighed. “We gotta go through all this DNA and the Indians and all this?”

  “I think so,” Murch’s Mom said.

  “I’m feeling kind of at a loss without it,” Murch said.

  Kelp said, “John, let me take a whack at it.”

  “It’s all yours,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp said, “John and Tiny and me got involved with some people doing an Anastasia, and we need a right DNA sample, and it’s gonna be on a comb in a place with hundreds of thousands of dollars of valuable stuff, so while we’re there, anyway, why don’t we take it all.”

  “Sounds good,” Murch said.

  “I’m glad you called,” his Mom said.

  Dortmunder said, “That’s it? Now you’re satisfied?”r />
  “Well, when it’s explained,” Murch’s Mom said.

  Kelp said, “Okay, what I got here is the stuff from the Thurstead Web site.” Pulling a stack of papers from his envelope, he said, “All in color, and it’s free. What we got here is a whole brand-new way to case a joint.” Dealing out stapled-together pages, he said, “We can all take a look at this place.”

  The top page was a very nice color photograph of an imposing and vaguely Oriental building, made of stone blocks, different sizes and different colors, so that one wall was a kind of rusty rosy red, while the other wall you could see in this picture was more of a faded pea-soup green. The photo had been taken in the summer, and muted purple-and-gold awnings angled out over all the windows. The windows themselves were different sizes and shapes, and some of them had panes of colored glass. The roof was molasses-colored shingles, and the three onion domes were different shades of dark blue. It all came together, somehow, probably because all the colors were muted and calm.

  “Some snazzy place,” Murch’s Mom decided.

  Murch said, “I don’t remember ever driving past this place. Where is it?”

  “Jersey,” Kelp told him. “Way out by the Delaware Water Gap. In fact, if you look at what it says under the picture, it’s inside the national park there, the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.”

  Murch said, “So what’ve you got there, park rangers?”

  “No,” Kelp said, “they were there before the park went in, so they’re like grandfathered. Read about it. On page two is very nice.”

  They all read about it, how Russell Thurbush, the famous painter, had designed and built the house high on a hilltop overlooking the Delaware River, how he’d filled it with valuable art and stuff he brought back from his worldwide travels, how it was on the National Register of Historic Places and was maintained by a nonprofit private foundation run by Thurbush’s great-granddaughter and her husband, Viveca and Frank Quinlan, who live on the property. Most of the downstairs was open to the public, with guided tours, from April until November.